


in which atlas loves the sky

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Gen, canon compliant but canon is also free real estate, doesnt take place anywhere particular in canon but it’s pretty early, etc - Freeform, flashbacks are based off of the no regrets manga more than the ova, for things like how levi and isabel first met
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:14:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29013384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There was one opening to the sky, back in the Underground.One.A single, small circle of too-bright light shining on dull gray stone.(Isabel’s the one who found it, tucked deep in the caverns, because she loved to watch the birds almost more than she loved being taught how to slit a man’s throat. It was the first gift she gave her new brother, when they were eleven and seventeen and barely more than skin and bones and there was no Furlan, not yet.)
Relationships: Levi & Erwin Smith, Levi Ackerman & Furlan Church & Isabel Magnolia
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	in which atlas loves the sky

There was one opening to the sky, back in the Underground. 

One. 

A single, small circle of too-bright light shining on dull gray stone. 

(Isabel’s the one who found it, tucked deep in the caverns, because she loved to watch the birds almost more than she loved being taught how to slit a man’s throat. It was the first gift she gave her new brother, when they were eleven and seventeen and barely more than skin and bones and there was no Furlan, not yet.)

Before seeing it—Levi had known, distantly, that the sky would be blue. The same way he knew that trees are tall and there are walls that keep everyone in and Titans out. Vaguely. Uncertainly. They were things everyone knew, after all, so they must be true, he’d just... never seen the proof. 

When he first looked up—

(When Isabel first dragged him over to look up—)

He’d completely underestimated just how blue the sky would be. 

And empty. 

And just—bright. Vibrant. He had to squint at first, couldn’t look at it directly. It was so much brighter than the lanterns, torches, candles that he knew.

_(Just wait,_ Isabel says. _It gets brighter.)_

The sun shone right through the little opening once a day, around noon.

It was—

Brilliant. Breathtaking. Blinding, actually, and Levi (and Isabel and Isabel and Isabel and Furlan) would have to settle for just sitting in the sunlight rather than looking up, no matter how much they wanted to stare straight at the sun until it was all they could see. 

He stands on top of Wall Rose, now, and remembers how precious their little broken-off shard of sky and sunlight had been. Compares it, briefly, to the vastness stretching out before him.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Erwin comes up from behind him. 

“It’s alright,” Levi shrugs. 

——————

They see the sky for real when they sneak aboveground to steal 3DM gear. 

(They have Furlan, now, a much-needed strategist and overthinker for Levi and Isabel—who don’t often think before they have knives at the ready and curses on their tongues. He’s their caution and they’re his fury, and it works.)

It’s risky. They don’t have any kind of official papers for it, not even false ones. 

It’s even riskier when they stand there, frozen in awe, at the sky above them. It’s only barely restrained by Wall Sina, and Levi has enough vertigo staring up at it like this. To see the sky unrestrained, stretching from horizon to horizon? He feels faint just thinking about it. 

(Isabel stumbles backward and reaches for his hand, squeezes it, and he squeezes back without thinking. Furlan steadies himself on Levi’s shoulder, and he doesn’t pull away.)

It’s somehow bluer than before. Levi didn’t think that color could even _exist._

(It’s too much. It’s not enough. It’s breathtaking and it’s perfect.) 

——————

They’d only been able to see a couple of stars from their little opening to the sky back in the Underground.

It’s pathetic compared to this. To the pinprick glow of thousands upon thousands of stars, while the moon softly shines, silver and bright.

_(Trust me,_ Furlan says. _Trust us._ Isabel grins at them both, starlight shining in her eyes. And it goes against everything Levi was ever taught, everything beaten into him and starved out of him, but he does. He does.) 

Hanji likes to find him at night sometimes, bringing with her a few very, very illegal books, when she knows he isn’t sleeping and couldn’t if he tried. She points out different stars and their strange names and meanings and purposes for navigation on a ocean that Levi can’t even imagine, and she traces out constellations and tells stories of people and places that don’t exist anymore and never will again. It’s one of the only things he’ll listen to her ramble about uninterrupted, and it’s just as much for her as it is for him. 

——————

He never does quite get used to the sun beating down on his face. It feels like a marvel every time. 

(Isabel thrives in the sunlight, like she’s a poor, half-dead flower that’s been suddenly placed by a window. She blooms, bounces, cheers, she’s louder than ever before and Levi tells her to shut up and she doesn’t, and he’s so glad that she doesn’t.) 

It terrifies him. He wants to go inside where it’s cool and dark and familiar, and he never, ever wants to go inside ever again. Because what really scares him, more than the warm, unfamiliar light, is the idea of getting used to it. 

(Furlan is nervous, lurking like a thin shadow against a wall, sunburn on his face and hands and everywhere their new uniforms don’t cover. Freckles start appearing on his skin, scattered like constellations on his cheeks, and it makes him looks younger, somehow. More innocent, more naive, when the opposite is true.)

It feels inevitable that they’ll have to go back home again. Levi dreads it. He dreads it with everything he has. 

——————

They’re on their first expedition when they first see the sky as it should be seen, whole and free and unrestrained. 

The Scouts cloak is a heavy, but not unwelcome, weight around Levi’s shoulders. The Survey Corp is in perfect formation but some of the horses are jittery, picking up on the anxiety of their riders, and the formation shifts and readjusts as it needs to. Levi is careful to avoid eye contact with the crowd around them—

(—or with Isabel, grinning, or Furlan, near panic—)

—and keeps his gaze straight ahead. 

The gate rises. 

The gate rises, and the field before them is open. 

Endless.

Sweeping green, met by the blue blue blue blue _blue_ stretching up from the horizon, dotted with fluffy clouds, while trees stand clumped in the distance. 

Levi feels that old, familiar vertigo tugging on his head again, spinning and spinning and dizzying, a reminder of the gaping expanse of the real world. 

(Isabel and Furlan are struck with shock and awe and maybe a bit of terror, too, and they chatter about how beautiful it is, for once in perfect agreement, and Levi says _it’s not bad_ because he has a reputation to uphold but—)

But he can barely breathe, sunlight on his skin and blue in his eyes, and as their squad rides forward, there’s wind in his hair and his lungs, and—and he could do this _forever._

——————

_(You didn’t tell me that the sky could be that many colors, big brother,_ Isabel accuses, her head against his shoulder as her red hair catches fire in the dimming light of sunset. Furlan is quiet, blue eyes gone molten gold, and he stands still and shaken with one hand covering his mouth. 

_I didn’t know,_ Levi murmurs. _I didn’t know.)_

——————

He hadn’t realized that clouds could be purple and black like a fresh bruise, and just as threatening. Not until their second expedition, not until the rain starts to come down in sheets, and he pulls away to ride alone because he thinks that everyone else will be safe if they’re together. 

_(Trust me,_ Furlan says, over and over and over again, and Levi does. _Trust me,_ Levi says, in the pouring rain and thick, curling fog, and Furlan does.)

——————

Levi should really hate the rain. Nothing good has ever happened in the rain. 

Rain makes rooftops and walls slippery, slickens his 3DM gear, makes it ridiculously hard to see. People _die_ in the rain.

(Isabel’s blood runs in rain-diluted rivulets and water trails its way down Furlan’s resigned face—)

But rain is a calming sound, is the thing. It’s almost by instinct, the way it starts to patter on the rooftops and something in him just—uncoils, breathes, for however long it lasts, until the clouds part and the sound trails off and Levi is back again. And Mike always says there’s something about the smell of rain and after-rain, and Levi can’t help but agree. 

(Erwin was there when they saw rain for the first time. He’d watched, bemused, as the three of them outright refused to go inside. Isabel had cried, wholly and shamelessly, hands reaching up like she could catch the raindrops and hold them. Furlan had frozen, eyes wide, shaking like a leaf with something akin to awe. Levi had just turned his head up to the sky and _marveled.)_

——————

The rain had stopped by the time that Erwin found Levi after they—

They—

After they—

...By the time Erwin found him. He’d been bloody, exhausted, and hollowed out to nothing but rage, and then he didn’t even have rage. Just a great big gaping nothing. He remembers wishing desperately that it would keep raining. The sky didn’t care, and in that moment, he had cursed how blue it was. 

——————

By all rights, Levi should hate storms, just as much as rain. Erwin certainly does, locks himself in the most soundproof room they have with the most boring paperwork he can find. Even Hanji barely tolerates them, mutters incessantly about washed-away evidence and the way that she can’t get waterproof flares to work right, how easy it is to get lost. 

He should hate storms. He knows firsthand how deadly they can be. 

(Knows exactly how it feels to get back home, shuddering in a soaking wet uniform, half-frozen, and people keep talking at you but you can’t hear anything but the rain and the screaming and you can’t feel anything but the cold and the hollowness that’s under your ribs and at your left and right, spaces that should be filled. Spaces that were filled just hours ago, and were dug out of you with gnashing teeth and rainwater.)

He knows, too, what thunder and lightning resembles—Titan footsteps, explosions, cannon fire, the walls are crumbling and falling down down _down._

But—frankly—he’d rather have Titan footsteps in his head than Petra’s corpse. He much prefers explosions over the crunching of bone and splatter of blood. (Furlan’s sad, smiling face driven away by the sound of walls crumbling down, and Isabel, Isabel, _Isabel—)_

When he saw his first storm, he’s thought the world was ending. After so much spilled blood and dead men and Erwin Smith and now even Titans, Levi’s retribution had finally come, and the sky was falling down. 

(Isabel didn’t like storms as much as she loved the rain, would curl into Levi’s side to block out the sound—but Furlan stared out the window and tried to see every lightning strike, tried to trace all the reaching branches of electricity. Flagon taught him to count the seconds between lightning and thunder to see how far away the storm really was, and Furlan would mutter the numbers under his breath every time.) 

But rain is a calming sound, is the thing, and a storm is rain but violent, rain but angry, rain but it’s lashing out at the injustice of the world beneath it, and when he saw his first storm he thought the world was ending. He thinks the world is always ending, really, and a storm is no different. Just louder, more beautiful, more calming, even as trees crack and threaten to fall and the wind tries to take the breath from their lungs.

They’re in some old cabin for shelter while a storm rages outside, expedition cut short, and his squad isn’t doing so well. 

Eren and Armin and Mikasa are huddled in one of the corners, in their own personal nest of blankets and cloaks. Every time thunder rumbles across the sky and under the floorboards Armin flinches, lightly, and Eren sends a desperate glance out the window, and Mikasa holds on tighter. Jean stares out the window with the kind of melancholy he usually buries, and Historia’s eyes are closed but she shudders whenever the wind blows. Sasha and Connie are playing some kind of hand game in the middle of the room, blankets over their shoulders, whispering louder than they should and laughing harder than they need to. 

It’s a quiet scene, deceptively calm, and wildly out of character (all things considered). Levi sits underneath the window with his head against the thin walls, and doesn’t say anything. 

He should. They’ve got another day of hard riding tomorrow and he should tell them all to go to sleep, but that would make him the worst kind of hypocrite right about now. Even worse than being a soldier who loves storms. 

——————

“Ugh, it’s freezing,” Jean whines, boots crunching in the freshly-fallen snow, fruitlessly brushing it out of his hair as it continues to fall. Levi suppresses a snort. 

“You’re no fun,” Sasha teases, and Eren is quick to agree, shouting something about Jean needing to feel a little joy for once in his miserable life. Sasha takes the opportunity in front of her and ropes both Eren and Armin into trying to catch snowflakes with their tongues, while Mikasa watches and tries not to laugh. 

_(What’s this one?_ Levi asks Hanji, pointing to the window. _Because if the sky is actually falling this time..._

_Aw, don’t be silly. That’s just snow. It’s pretty, but it’ll cause us some trouble if Titans attack,_ Hanji explains.

_Oh,_ Levi says. _Weird._

And they both leave it at that.)

Connie gathers a snowball in his hands, and Levi doesn’t bother warning Jean. 

_“HEY!”_

“If you’re so mad, come and get me!” Connie cackles. 

(Isabel and Furlan were gone before the end of summer. They had three months on the surface. That’s it. They never even got to see snow. Isabel would’ve had the time of her life, Levi’s sure, and Furlan would’ve complained incessantly about the cold.)

Connie manages to duck out of the way and Jean’s snowball hits Historia instead, and Historia’s snowball glances off of Jean and hits Sasha, who retaliates immediately with a frankly impressive bombardment of snowballs, but one of them hits Armin, and Mikasa and Eren are instantly at his side with vengeance in their eyes. 

Levi makes sure he stays well out of their way, but he’s close enough that he can hear the shrieking laughter that fills the air, and he’s glad for it. It’s been too quiet. 

——————

“Whatcha looking at, Captain?” Eren hops up beside him on the roof. 

“Hm? Oh. Nothing.” Levi doesn’t turn toward him, doesn’t look away from the sky, brilliant in the afternoon light. 

“Oh.” Eren fidgets. 

Levi pauses. “...The sky’s really blue, isn’t it?” 

He glances to the side in time to see Eren give him an odd look.

“Uh... I guess so?”

“Never mind,” Levi shakes his head. “It’s not important.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope you all enjoyed ! only recently got into aot—I’m super late, I know—but I got a bit emotionally attached to this trio
> 
> (if any of you are here from my tma stuff, yes im not dead and yes I’m still working on ghosts eldritch horrors and youtubers !!! I promise !!! I just had to get this idea out of my head first)


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